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A day at the aucion.

We propped David Berman with a can of Kerosene. The Silver Jews are really really

Another week down at Untitled Concepts, week 6, and lots of appointments and fun getting stock for the shop, designing the interior and shooting the products. There are some serious players in the JUNK GAME. Not in the sense of money but in the sense of style, of self. It feels like I have joined the real world, the blue collar world, or a world that brings happiness out of me, kindness, curiousity, not judgement, frustration, impatience and disdain. The work makes you sore, injury is imminent and the thirst for beer increases ten fold.

I have not really found my creative feet yet and I often feel lazy but despite the laziness I have always done things the hard way, not just out of stubborness but more for a desire to feel pain, accomplishement, or just more alive. And once I lift my ass out of bed or away from the television the work is fun and unexpected, wide open, like travelling with no itinerary. I am still not a happy person, and I occasionally worry about that and my incredible bitterness. I want to slow down my mind's pace, be in the now. I think I would be kinder. Perhaps a result of my past work life. The rags to riches to rags. Sometimes it just feels like a wasted life. But I was living a lie and that's all on me, and the rewards gathered during that time were a bit tainted and I let all the good slip away. I always hated working for the yuppie family man and the eager shoulda stayed at home mom, they never seemed to care about pushing conventional standards or finding something original. I never got over my disrespect for those people. But moreso hitting a dead end after 12 years sucks, and making the U-turn is tough and slow going but I have to be thankful for my old career, it left me enough in the tank to make the U-turn, and it gave me enough freetime to build-up for the change before it spit me out. I thought I remained unaffected by all of it but after 12 years and the northern virginia pace, I find that I don't like a lot of who I am and who I have become. This new direction is toward the person I was when it all started in Baltimore before life happened to me. Maybe that is why I like old things because I am still totally living in the past. I am a natural at making the best of what I have, parasitic perhaps, creative possibly, inspiring doubtful. So the eclectic things I find and repurpose are exactly what lie at my feet, highlights along the path back home. They are markers and incite memories of my life long gone. Like driving in that old mint 1980 Datsun a few weeks ago, tuned to a radio station that just does not exist pumping out songs of my childhood and the smell of cooking dashboard in the summer sun. It takes me back to St Paul St 1976, maybe these moments will slowly heal me of the pain that I have still not let go and that has plagued me my whole life. Maybe that is what the right path is all about, healing and celebrating the clues back to who you truly are. It's not always so simple, there is trust and risk and all of that with any endeavour which is making you a living. The money helps give me confidence and it helps me to be open to feeling what is around me, and not denying it, ignoring it and just trusting in myself.

As I age and watch my life further diverge from many of those around me I can't help but worry a bit, I want what they have, when will my life come around, I am not that different, I want to be happy like them. I think to much? That is what the contractor who stole 5000 bucks from me said. And perhaps he's right but it's not a choice, it's part of my make-up, it's my guidance system. And without it I would never find my way back to myself. And without this constant thinking, my child-like imagination could not create and take what's around me as symbols or markers and turn them into clues and memories and stories. I would be truly lost without it.

Anyway, check out the photos on Factory 20 that is all the stuff Eric and I find and photograph in the shop when we get back and they are all for sale. And the iphone photos below and mostly in the blog are from the road. Maybe our stuff will live on an Untitled Concepts website as we develop the business. Cheers. Dino.

UNTITLED CONCEPTS, LLC
An ever-evolving nonlinear consumer lifestyles gallery and industrial design space. Showcasing and discovering intrinsically valuable decorative arts and furniture to convey a different impression of 20th century design.

Pretty Haute stuff eh? Thank you very much.

The fledgling business is coming along swimmingly. The UNTITLED CONCEPTS Showroom is looking better than ever and we are expanding it to 1000 sq ft next week, as our backlog of older stock is selling off. It is definitely the best job I have ever had. Want to know why, because I still feel UNEMPLOYED!

I worked at a Studfarm as a farmhand for a summer back in the late eighties in Sparks, MD. For a guy named Jervy. A man right out of the RRL Double R Ralph Lauren Catalog, with the OLD MONEY and beat to hell off-yellow Mercedes Diesel Wagon, with the cream leather interior. What a fuckin ride I still want one after all these years. Just to get a taste of that OLD MONEY vibe, the one that keeps me picking up old Polo at the thriftshops. You know what I am talking about. Pretending your day job is really the countryclub (for me that was AOL) and thinking the pay check was from old Mable in Brussels. Anyway, One time he had me tail his drunkard brother, staking him out at the country club for days waiting and watching the hot gilf's squat around all day on the putting green. Then my chance came to follow him down the street pass him (in my yellow 1973 Beetle) and race down to the designated pay phone to alert Seargent Stadenko of the quarry (the drunk driver in route, *wink, wink.) This was Jervy's attempt at getting his bro into rehab, it paid $64 a day, and of course the plot failed miserably. But to this day one of the best jobs I have ever had, well till now. Just designed the business cards last night with the art direction swaying toward the Wes Anderson asethetic and the color scheme is based on something that caught my eye in the shop. My ice cold, right out of the stainless steel subzero fridge, sweating in the summer heat Miller (the champange of beers) and yes it is. So my Champange of Beers was sweating atop a pile of furniture on the flat side of an upside down 1800's walnut gothic chair and behind this pile was an old green heavily used floorstanding chalk board, you know the kind the teacher would swing around at the end of class to reveal the pre-written homework assignment. But of course minus the round of hissing kids. The colors just paused me and sang heavenly choirs into my retinas, must be like what the evil female captor hears in the 007 movies when James Bond makes love to them and they decide to switch to the side of good and righteous and instantly become helpful, docile and loyal. And that hasn't happened to me since college and then I was too stupid to notice. Well....Enjoy. And if you need a card designed? Or some conceptual creavtive writing? Email me, I do both. But I have no sense of client relations so buyer beware. Cheers! Dino.

The Modern Condo Renovation Continues

The one shot was where the new kitchen is now. Pretty different eh?

More Manual Labor

Paul's Cable Hung Treehouse. Sloping roof. 8 foot to 6 foot, with a loft inside on the high side. Hope Rios and little Dino have fun in this thing. We whipped it up in a 6 hours with a nail gun minor injury.

In the PRESS...

We are in the Loudoun Extra and the Washington Post...But Leah Carliner spelled my name wrong, Dino Paulo, not Dino Paxenos! And our company was spelled Unique Concepts, not Untitled Concepts! Oh well...Lucky regardless.

The Article

The Pictures

Sweet Sweetness, Thanks Leah Carliner!

Untitled Concepts

Our new Office refrigerator. We had to employ some help off the streets to get this freebee in the van, a c.1987 Sub-Zero 241 RFD. It's a beauty, more stainless steel than a Delorean. Thanks Matt.

We put some productive time in at the shop this evening.

Out of the 'Barney Rumble' comes another 'Estate Car'

I am real happy about the new endeavor, things are really getting exciting. And this commitment to being open to everything will always be a challenge for me but it's a good way to live! And if I have learned anything about the future this is it; Life has a way of feeding you what you've sworn off, and a free meal is very hard to pass up. It's baked into our new business plan for 'Untitled Concepts' all the way down to the name. We are an ever-evolving consumer space and industrial design fabrication shop. In the consumer space we will be reselling procured luxury items, oddities, and good design. The retail space will be more like an art installation, an experience that changes with the wind. In the back, the shop we'll be restoring the old items, photographing and marketing, creating metal, wood, concrete prototypes of furnishings/lighting and fine art. We will be fully functional in 3 weeks.
The Datsun 810 is history, and a beautiful white and chrome 1976 Volvo 265DL Stayway (stationwagon) is on the horizon, should be in her by sundown. And for a few days things have slowed down but others have come quicker and repeated themselves. It's strange. We now have an industrial space, a factory, a retail store, a photo studio, a clubhouse, a day job. Unemployable to Self-Employed, Sweet Baby Jesus, Hanks Going to Hell. I wonder what the world record is for the number of businesses under one roof, a goal as good as any.
Yesterday West Virginia with Ruler Suspenders, and High School Bleach Blondes and Today out of the blue my old roommate returned to rent his old room, after a 30 day unannounced hiatus. My roommate is not a fixture via time but somehow he still gains the status, on another level, but it's not clear. Well, I hope things go smoothly at the Reston Modern Condo for the rest of the summer or so, maybe till Halloween.
The Char-B-Que is cooling down in Reston. And we're all gearing up for our first holiday under the new status of; Self-Employed peoples. We promise not to work through it. Though if it's fun is it work? Martha Stewart says, if your friends get mad at you when you do it in front of then, it might be work! Or something far far worse and a bit off subject (or purple.)
EEG and I have moved into our new 2500 sq ft space called, "Untitled Concepts" and hope to have the space up and running smoothly in a couple of weeks, with a grand opening say hello in late July. TBA! Cheers! Dino.